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Poster:	garthus1	Date:	November 29, 2012 07:15:53am
Forum:	texts	Subject:	Re: No info about copyright ?

Suusn,

In the United States any book dated 1923 or older is in the Public Domain. After that there are rules which govern that status, eg. whether the book was ever copyrighted, renewed, etc. .... Also it depends upon the year of publication since all books published after March 1989 are automatically copyrighted. The law in this country is so convoluted that status can be difficult to determine in some cases. After 1989 the term is ridiculous and in many cases conflicts with the creative process. In essence it is all about the large publishers and production companies paying off our elected officials in the United States to give them tremendous economic benefit concerning copyright issues. Fortunately a great majority of the materials created before 1989 are really in the Public Domain and while there have been recent attempts to change that; some of us have rushed to digitize those works and place them in the Public Domain. All the items which I post are in the Public Domain, there was a question about one item, but that was a grey area and if you look at the statutes carefully there is some conflict within the text itself. Basically, if I know that something has a copyright I will not post it, if it is a grey area I will and then if there is a complaint I will look into it. That is what the so-called 'orphan books' status is about. A good assumption can be that a great number of items posted on the Archive are in the Public Domain; if any copyright violation appears it is dealt with quickly, at least that is what I have seen. There are ways to check status in government databases, you can find them on-line. If you need more information I can provide the links or you can do a web search.

Gerry